In the Light of You Read online

  Everything, I feel, that had happened in my life leading up to that night, as rough as it may have been, had pretty well gone as scheduled. And everything since has followed the course set that night. On the evening of my seventeenth birthday I had no idea that I would be making a flip o’ the coin decision that would ultimately mean the difference between life and death. I could have just as easily chosen something else. We could have gone out for burgers. We could have gone to the movies. We could have burned down some old abandoned apartment complex. But that’s all the other. There is only what we did and the other. I have no idea where the other path would have lead. Maybe to the same place in the end. But I doubt it.

  Like I said, it was my seventeenth birthday. Richard’s pad was packed with crazed hooligans. Final Solution on the stereo, beer was flowing, people were dancing and skanking this way and that. Richard was smart enough to have nothing of value in what passed for the living room, as bedlam and mayhem were the norm around his place. The TV had been stuffed in the closet along with the stereo console. There were a couple of already-broken couches that ended up completely demolished that night, and a recliner that never really had a prayer. Everything worth anything was kept in Richard’s bedroom, which no one but he and invited guests could enter. He even took down his beloved Nazi flag that night and re-hung it in the bedroom, where it pretty well stayed from then on.

  Within our little circle of friends the notion began to float about that we should ditch the party for a while, head out on our own, and come back later ready to rage the night away. We could have stayed right there, of course. We could have gone for a walk or hitchhiked to Detroit. Somebody said, “It’s up to the birthday boy.” To which I replied, “Sure. Fuck it. Let’s head downtown for a drink or two.” And that’s what we did.

  Suzi was with me, Reeba with Phil, Anne with Joe, and another couple, Jennie and Geoff, came along. Richard and Brian were as yet unattached to anyone. We ended up at this trendy, collegey place called The Stable. All the little students were scrubbed and squeaky-clean drinking fruity cocktails, dancing to whatever slug vomit pop radio told them to love that week, and hoping to maybe acquire a little company for the evening. The crowd was a fairly liberal mix of types … all in their designated uniforms. And there we were strolling in: six cue-balled knuckle heads in red braces and black bowling jackets wearing four fine and dandy punk rock girls on our arms like it’s a grand gala affair. We were not the folks with whom to fuck, the whole club knew it, and good on them for the sharp eye. But although we were in enemy territory that night, we were there on a mission of peace. More or less.

  “Hey Mikey,” Richard whispered, “What do you think. Worth my time?”

  He indicated toward the bar at these two pitiful little skirts sitting overwhelmed and unsure. Neither looked old enough to be there, even to my seventeen-year-old eyes. I wasn’t sure which had caught Richard’s attention: the knobby-kneed four-eyes who looked like Peppermint Patty’s girl toy in the Peanuts cartoon, or the wispy little puff of nothing next to her. No sooner did I see them when a raver-boy in outlandishly large blue jeans came up to “Marci” and whisked her away to the dance floor.

  “Which one, Rich, the geek or the leftover?”

  “The fucking ‘leftover,’ jackass,” He said irritated. “She’s the one I meant from the get-go.”

  “She’s all right. Go for it.”

  “Meh … we’ll see.”

  Joe ordered us each a pint and we muscled a group of trust-fundies away from the table we decided was ours. The tragic comedy surrounding us on all sides was almost too much to bear. Big Pants and Nerd Girl on the dance floor alone, slobbering on each other like two spastics sharing a mutual fit, was enough to make you bust a gut either laughing or puking.

  “Fags over there,” Brian said pointing. “Dykes over there. Mutts of every stripe, shade, and stench. Somebody just say the word, I’m ready to stomp this trash.”

  “Richard,” Reeba said, “that baby blonde at the bar is staring at you.”

  Well, of course she was. Most of the chicks there had their eyes on Richard, even the dark-skinned ones who should know better. Richard looked over at her, raised his glass and smiled. She smiled back all bashful-like, and looked intently at her parasol.

  “No stomping tonight, Bri,” Richard said. “Just sit back and enjoy the freak show.”

  “Hippie,” Phil razzed.

  “Yo’ mama a hippie, nigga,” Richard said jutting out his lips. We laughed and laughed.

  An hour and a half went by, maybe more, and the novelty pretty well wore thin and then out. We did tool with a few chumps stupid enough to get near us, but for the most part playing nice was the rule. Geoff and I headed off to the men’s room for a leak. We each took a urinal on either side of a young Middle Eastern gentleman.

  “Hey Mike, I think I just pissed on my hand. Could you throw me a towel?”

  “Can’t help you, Geoff. Maybe Habib here can lean his head over and be a pal.”

  “My name’s not Habib,” the fellow sighed. “I’m a Sikh.”

  “Allah al habbala? Sim salla bim?”

  “I don’t want any trouble, guys,” said Not Habib, zipping up quickly and heading for the door.

  “Vell tang you veddy mush!” Geoff called after him. Good times.

  As we exited the rest room we spotted the lonely girl at the bar lighting matches and watching them go out in an ashtray. She smiled as her dweebette friend and the skate brat finally made their way back over to her. It didn’t last long.

  “Hey, uh, Sharon,” I heard Nerd Girl say, “how’s it going? Listen, I need a big fave.”

  Poor Lil Thing’s eyes were wide with disbelief as her apparent friend told her she needed their dorm room for the evening. Exclusively. “You understand, right? Pay ya back. Promise.” And with nary another word spoken, “Marci” and her fine catch of the evening skipped jauntily away into the night. As tears filled the bright blue eyes of that abandoned and forlorn young maiden, as she stood at the bar lost and alone muttering impotent protests to no one at all, Geoff and I literally fell backward against the wall in peals of laughter.

  But then … as he is wont to do … Superman swooped in and assed up our fun.

  “Excuse me?” Richard said to her leaning in across the bar. The girl peered up at him with a look that instantly brought goose-flesh up on my back. It was a look close to awe, as if she had known of him already from myth or legend or TV and she couldn’t believe that he was really there. Couldn’t believe that he was talking to her. I clenched up when I saw it. Like I shouldn’t have been there to see it. It wasn’t for my eyes, and I was an intruder. It was a look that I knew no woman would ever give me (and, to date, none have). I stopped laughing instantly and felt like a cretin for having done so in the first place. Geoff simply shrugged and headed back to the table. Clearly he did not have the same reaction. I stayed, against the wall, in the shadows.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Richard continued, “but my constituents and I were feeling a bit lonely over there in the corner. We were wondering if you’d like to come join us.” He pointed to everyone at the table. They all waved. She giggled and nodded.

  “Richard Lovecraft,” he said.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she replied. “Sherry Nicolas.”

  “Truly my pleasure.” A line only Richard could pull off.

  I walked back to the table a couple of steps behind them. Richard waved me up quickly.

  “Sherry, this is my best friend Mikal Fanon.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mikal,” Sherry said. I smiled weakly and nodded. I was, as they say, thrown for a loop. Best friend? Did Richard Lovecraft just call me his best friend?

  “It’s Mikal’s birthday today. He’s forty-three.”

  “Well happy birthday, Mikal. You don’t look a day over thirty-eight.”

  Best friend. I heard him say it. Best friend …

  Sherry Nicolas was nineteen years old when she came into our li
ves. She had just started at university with nothing in the world but a fake ID, a few changes of clothes, and a really large poster of Marilyn Monroe. And a couple of smaller posters of James Dean, a young Brando, and a framed postcard of Steve McQueen. She grew up in that part of the burbs that used to be the country not too long ago. This was her first time ever away from home. We were her first new friends. It’s hard to know how to feel.

  We returned to Richard’s apartment with the new girl in tow and you’d have never known we had left. Skrewdriver blasted on the stereo. The drunks were belligerent. Some people were making out. Some appeared to be fighting. Some appeared to do both. Slamming, pilin’-on, diving from the speakers. This baldie Neanderthal I only ever knew as “Meat Cake” was swinging a girl around by her neck. We’d seen them do this countless times before. She would scream and cry but if you tried to put a stop to it she’d kick you in the nuts. Whatever. Some shirtless maniac tossed Fosters oil cans to us all immediately upon arrival. Sherry looked wide-eyed and taken aback by all the goings on … but something told me she’d seen her share of rip-snortin’ hoe downs before. Suzi jumped on my back and doused me with beer. She squealed as I spun in circles swinging her around, her boots whacking some poor sucker in the teeth. Brian and Joe smashed beer cans against their foreheads and dove into the swirling whirlpool of bodies. And so went the remainder of my seventeenth birthday in much the same fashion. After a while Richard and Sherry disappeared. Surprise.

  Once the last of the folks had either passed out or gone home Suzi and I retired to our little nest on the screened-in back porch. For my birthday Richard had given me a futon mattress from his parents’ house. That night I finally brought Suzi to orgasm for the first time. Or perhaps she just faked it on account of my birthday. Either way …

  “I want you to come meet Daddy this weekend,” she said lazily as she drifted off to sleep. “I know you’ll really like him. He’s the most coolest-est.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

  “I promise the wicked witch won’t be there,” she said, yawned, and then fell into instant deep sleep. I pulled the blanket down a bit from her bare back to inspect the series of what looked like razor cuts along her shoulder blade. “Cold,” she whined, and pulled the blanket back up. That’s just the way it was.

  I got up for a glass of water and some aspirin sometime before daybreak. Walking out into the kitchen I heard the unmistakable sound of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg spinning on the turntable in Richard’s bedroom. That was no surprise. I was also not taken aback by the sound of Sherry Nicolas gasping, panting, and moaning Richard’s name. What instead bashed into me from nowhere was my own reaction to it. I instantly crumpled to my knees and covered my ears as tightly as I could. My stomach twisted into knots and a cold sweat broke out on my brow. But why? I’d overheard Richard poke plenty of broads on numerous occasions. At the absolute worst it was only ever vaguely annoying. But listening to this girl cry, “I c-c-can’t believe … I can’t buh-be-believe … you’re fucking me! Oh god, you’re FUCKING me!!!” … it carved into to my chest like an ice pick. It ripped me to shreds. It was too real. Too naked. Too close. I can’t be here now. I’m not supposed to be here now. I didn’t mean to be where I’m not allowed … But why?

  Back out on our porch, Suzi whispered to me, “Are they still goin’ at it?”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled, taking my best stab at nonchalance. I must have failed miserably.

  “What’s wrong, Mikal?”

  “Huh? Ain’t nothin’ wrong, of course. Go back to sleep, Suze.”

  “Did you have a good birthday?” “Yeah, I did. Of course I did. Of course.”

  4.

  WHEN I awoke the next morning Suzi was gone. Off to school. There wasn’t a woman in the house. I came out to the main room to find a bunch of the boys sitting around inspecting handguns. Richard sat frowning at his framed issue of Volkischer Beobachter from 1920, which normally hung on the wall in the hallway. The glass was shattered. I gave him a sympathetic look. He shrugged.

  “No big deal. The frame itself is fine. Well worth it for the party we had. Get dressed, Mikey. We’re going down to the range for practice.”

  “I don’t have a gun,” I said.

  “For real, Mike?” Joe exclaimed. “And you were living in Niggerville? Goddamn. You must have a death wish, boy.”

  “We’ll get you a piece,” Richard said. “Everybody needs a pistol.”

  “I don’t want a gun,” I said flatly. “I ain’t going.”

  “Hmm …,” Richard grunted, nodding. “Apparently you misheard me. When I said, ‘We’re going down to the range for practice,’ it must have sounded to your ears like, ‘If you think it might be a peachy keen afternoon, would you like to maybe join us?’ Reasonable enough mistake, but hear me clearly now. WE. ARE. GOING. TO THE RANGE. FOR PRACTICE.”

  “Hear me clearly,” I replied, “I. AIN’T. GOING.” And I turned around and went back to the porch.

  As I got dressed, I figured that that was the end of my tenure as a ground soldier in the Racial Holy War. Dishonorable discharge.

  After a few minutes Richard came out to the porch and sat on a stack of cushions. He didn’t appear angry. He just sat and waited for me to explain myself. When I didn’t he finally said, “Okay, let’s hear it. What’s your deal with the guns?”

  “They’re just not for me. I don’t like ‘em.”

  “A gun is just a tool, Mike. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I ain’t afraid. I just don’t do guns.”

  “A tool, you hear me? Like a hammer or a drill.”

  “I don’t do hammers or drills neither.”

  “Dude, I’ve seen you use chains and black jacks. I know you carry a switchblade. What’s the fucking difference?”

  “YOU KNOW GODDAMN WELL WHAT THE GODDAMN DIFFERENCE IS!”

  “Mike,” Richard said calmly, “tell me what’s on your mind.”

  We sat still in another round of silence. “You know,” I finally said, “it’s hard to know how to feel when your best friend blows out a man’s stomach with a shotgun …”

  I told him all about my buddy in Louisville. I told him about Blackchurch and the overabundance of firearms. Going to sleep every night to the rat-tat-tat. I told him about watching the boy get shot in the temple and the thigh right in front of me. I told him, in no uncertain terms, I don’t do guns. He listened attentively, never interrupted or interjected. When I had said my piece, he replied, “Anybody ever pull one on you?”

  “Yeah. Some nig put a rod to the back of my head behind Sunny Mart.”

  “Did he rob you?”

  “No, he just said, ‘Is you scared?’ I said ‘Yep.’ He left it there for a couple of minutes, poking into my skull, just to make me sweat. Then he laughed and walked away.”

  “Huh. Just showing off his big black cock.”

  “I guess.”

  “But see, he would have had no power over you if you’d had a big black cock of your own to point back at him.”

  Touché.

  “Rich, I’ve said what I’m gonna said about this. If you want me to leave I’ll leave right now. But I will never carry a gun. Even if that means I’ll die for being outgunned.”

  “You’re not leaving,” he said. “I’ve heard you out, and I don’t agree with your position … but I respect it. You can hang out here today. We’ll be back around six and we’ll all go get some steaks or something.” And that was that.

  Staying home alone all morning and afternoon turned out to be a great decision simply for its own sake. It hadn’t occurred to me until then, but since joining this crew, virtually all of my waking life had been spent with them. It was an unexpectedly welcome relief to just hang out with myself inside my own head for a couple of hours. I played a bunch of Richard’s rare vinyl on the vintage turntable. I ordered a pizza with banana peppers, which I could normally never do since Brian was allergic to them. I played video games. Just because I fel
t that I probably should, I took a stab at reading Mein Kampf, which has got to be the single most skull-meltingly boring book ever written.

  I was mightily disappointed when I heard the front door open and somebody inquire, “Anybody home?” It was Sherry Nicolas.

  “In here,” I said, not taking my eyes off Sonic the Hedgehog.

  She came in, dropped her book bag in the corner, kicked her shoes off next to it, and peeled off her socks. She sat down next to me Indian-style on the obliterated couch.

  “Sonic?” she asked.

  “The very same. You wanna play?”

  “Nah. You here alone?”

  “They’re shooting.”

  “Guns?”

  “No, they’re shoo—yes … guns.”

  “My brothers and my dad all hunt. I don’t care for guns myself.”

  “Just a tool. Like a hammer or a drill. Nothing to be scared of.”

  “Guess you’re right. I was feeling special cuz Richard gave me a key to y’all’s pad, but then I found that the front door was unlocked anyway.”

  “We never lock it. We’re actually hoping some jungle bunnies try to come in and take shit. That would be good times. Don’t let that stop you from feeling special, though.”

  “Richard gets a lot of girls, doesn’t he?” she asked, jumping straight to it. Knocked me off balance for a moment.

  “Not really,” I lied. “You see a bunch of other broads with keys milling around in here?” There was a long pause that I tried to not let distract from the game. But it drove me nuts and I finally said, “So, uh, how is it? College, I mean?”

  And out it came a-flooding …

  “Too much. You know what I mean? It’s just too damn much. I’m always lost, always late, always short of money. Like college like life, right? Always have the wrong book, always in the wrong room at the wrong time. Back and forth, back and forth, office to office: Bursar, Registration, back to Admissions, Financial Aid. My name magically disappears from class lists. ‘It’s NICOLAS! N-I-C-oh never mind.’ I don’t know anybody and nobody wants to know me. Everyone had already been picked for teams and I didn’t even know what we were playing.”